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How to Earn Money Doing What You Love

2022-08-31 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 14:18 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Business and entrepreneurship · mode: List of tips or lessons · tags: Sponsor segment present

In a Money Club episode Ali gives reasons to monetise a hobby (you get better at it, it adds fun, it adds value to people), six tips for doing it (start from people and their problems, combine passions, choose goods or services, save people time or money, target people with money, sell to businesses) and warns that it can remove the joy of the hobby.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Money Club episode: why monetise your passions, how to do it and its dangers

  • ★★ Ali says making money from your hobbies or passions can be a really good thing to do and has completely changed his life, but it has potential dangers and drawbacks. — 00:00:00

00:00:29 — Part one: why you should consider monetising your hobbies

  • ★★ As a YouTuber, Ali says, he now makes money doing the thing he loves, which he calls pretty sick. — 00:00:29
  • ★★★ One of the main benefits of trying to monetise a passion or hobby, Ali says, is that it encourages you to get better at it. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ After a few years as a close-up magician on his webcam and in front of his mirror, Ali sought paid gigs at a restaurant and at university balls and parties, which honed his craft. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ Monetising close-up magic also taught Ali to sell and market himself and to get over the fear of rejection at auditions for balls and parties, skills that have helped him throughout his life. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ Ali's second benefit: trying to make money from a hobby such as the guitar, by teaching it or busking in your town centre, adds an extra element of challenge and fun. — 00:01:56
  • ★★★ As long as a monetised hobby is not your full-time job and earns pocket money, Ali says, you can treat it as an adventure and a challenge without relying on it to survive. — 00:01:56
  • ★★ Ali's final benefit: by making money from your passion you add value to people's lives, because otherwise they would not pay you, a win for you and for them. — 00:02:26 · first law of making money

00:02:55 — Part two: money as an exchange of value; tips one to four

  • ★★ With enough income from a monetised passion, Ali says, you could go part-time on your day job, free up time and gain more autonomy. — 00:02:55
  • ★★★ Money is ultimately an exchange of value, Ali says: to make money from a passion you must provide value to someone who is willing to pay you for it. — 00:02:55 · first law of making money
  • ★★★ Ali's first step to monetise a passion: instead of asking how to make money from, say, playing the guitar, ask who the people are that you could add value to. — 00:03:53
  • ★★★ Ali's second step: list the problems those people have, since money is about solving problems, and ask whether your passion could solve one of them. — 00:03:53
  • ★★ A university friend of Ali's who loved museums combined that with enjoying being around kids in a babysitting service taking rich families' children to museums, making, Ali thinks, a few thousand pounds a month. (hedged) — 00:05:06
  • ★★★ Ali's third tip: combine different passions or interests into a killer combination, which is more likely to attract an audience who will pay for it. — 00:05:35
  • ★ It is hard to make lots of money just playing the guitar, Ali says, because loads of people want to do it and it is a single skill. — 00:05:35
  • ★★ Ali's example of a combination: a programme that teaches kids guitar through songs they know, such as Ed Sheeran, Disney pop music or Let It Go from Frozen, instead of boring scales. — 00:06:05
  • ★★ Ali's fourth tip: choose the vehicle for delivering value; the two main ways are creating goods people need or want and selling services people want, need or do not want to do themselves. — 00:06:34
  • ★★★ Ali personally likes digital goods: they have no cost of reproduction, so you are very unlikely to lose money on them. — 00:07:03
  • ★★★ Services such as teaching guitar in your neighbourhood are an easy place to start, Ali says, while making goods is a lot harder but much more scalable and not directly tied to your time. — 00:07:32

00:07:46 — Shopify sponsor read

00:09:00 — Tips five and six: save time or make money, people with money, selling to businesses

  • ★★★ Ali's fifth tip: a good or service that saves people time or makes them money has a very tangible return on investment, so you are far more likely to make money from it. — 00:09:00
  • ★★★ Part of Ali's fifth tip: choose an audience of people who have money and want to spend it, since that makes money a lot easier to make than targeting people who are completely broke. — 00:09:00
  • ★★★ Ali does not like selling to or targeting students, because students famously do not have money and do not like spending it. — 00:09:29
  • ★★ To teach kids the guitar, Ali says, target the parents, who have the money to spend on their kids, which decides where you hand out flyers and which Facebook groups you join. — 00:09:29 · Facebook
  • ★★ Ali's sixth, underappreciated tip: recognise the difference between selling to individuals, who buy for their personal life, and selling to businesses or business owners, who buy for their business. — 00:09:59
  • ★★ As a business owner, Ali says, he spends money in his business completely differently from his personal money: it is tax deductible, the business has far more money than he does, and he expects a return. — 00:09:59
  • ★★★ A surprisingly simple way to make money from your passions, Ali says, is to work out how you could sell it as a service to a local business. — 00:10:28
  • ★★ Individuals are very price sensitive, Ali says, even rich ones in their personal life, while people are completely price insensitive in their business life. — 00:11:03
  • ★★ Selling to businesses is an untapped market, Ali says, because most people think like individuals and imagine solving problems that other individuals have. — 00:11:03
  • ★★★ Ali warns that sometimes making money from your hobbies can completely remove the joy of the hobby itself. — 00:11:32

00:11:45 — Part three: the dangers of trying to make money from your hobbies

  • ★★ An artist who makes painting fantasy scenes a full-time job, Ali says, will find 90% of their time goes on business admin, sales, marketing, clients and building an audience instead of art. (hypothetical) — 00:12:02
  • ★★ Ali's many musician friends, until they have a manager, spend about 10% of their time on music, the thing they love, and the rest on running it as a business. — 00:12:31
  • ★★★ To keep the joy, Ali says, expect the business side and do not feel you must make a hobby a full-time job: with a day job you enjoy that pays the bills, it is totally okay to keep your hobby a hobby. — 00:12:31
  • ★★★ Monetising your passion does not mean never working a day in your life, Ali says: the full-time creators he knows, himself included, all feel it as work or a chore some of the time. — 00:13:06 · passive income
  • ★★ Even if the income from a monetised hobby is astronomical, Ali advises not making it a requirement to sustain your life: diverse multiple streams of income are still useful. — 00:13:35
  • ★★★ Ali advises retaining autonomy, control and power over a monetised hobby: research shows they bring intrinsic motivation, while doing it for someone else or an extrinsic reason sucks the joy out. — 00:13:35 · identified motivation

00:14:05 — Money Club playlist and sign-off

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: first law of making money

Also: People: Ed Sheeran

Works: Frozen

Organizations: Facebook · Shopify · The Walt Disney Company

Concepts: identified motivation · passive income · person, problem, solution

Places: Natural History Museum

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